Eh, it's got me a bit uncertain, actually. Ever since this was announced I knew there would be issues. The Hobbit was much closer to a fun family adventure than a big sprawling Epic. Watching that trailer, the tone is all wrong. It takes itself more seriously than the source material (where a wallet could talk), and as such moments like all the dwarves falling over when Gandalf opens the front door just clash violently with the more serious tone.

Eh, it's got me a bit uncertain, actually. Ever since this was announced I knew there would be issues. The Hobbit was much closer to a fun family adventure than a big sprawling Epic. Watching that trailer, the tone is all wrong. It takes itself more seriously than the source material (where a wallet could talk), and as such moments like all the dwarves falling over when Gandalf opens the front door just clash violently with the more serious tone.

Color me anxious.

I cannot say I share your concerns. Like LOTR the Hobbit begins lighthearted and grows more serious and grim as the story moves along.

I must say however, Thorin Oakenshield, unlike the others, looks nothing like a dwarf but only a short man. That's a bit disappointing.

It all depends on how they play Thorin. I found it jarring too the first time I saw him, but I need more than this trailer before I pass any sort of judgment. I am super excited though.

We should also keep in mind that the more serious tone is at least partially derived from the fact that they are also including portions of the Unfinished Tales in this to bridge the gap between the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

It all depends on how they play Thorin. I found it jarring too the first time I saw him, but I need more than this trailer before I pass any sort of judgment. I am super excited though.

We should also keep in mind that the more serious tone is at least partially derived from the fact that they are also including portions of the Unfinished Tales in this to bridge the gap between the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

Indeed so, especially Sauron's banishment from Dol Gulder in Mirkwood by the Council of Wise, under the guise of the Necromancer. Should be very cool! I'm very pleased they are stitching together these things into the story.

It will be interesting to see how they handle the Elves of Mirkwood, and Thranduil, they were far from welcoming and really quite suspicious of any outsiders.

The trailer didn't really do much for me, as in it didn't raise my expectations to the movie, but it didn't disappoint me in any way either. Still planning to see the movie, and still kinda looking forward to it.

I cannot say I share your concerns. Like LOTR the Hobbit begins lighthearted and grows more serious and grim as the story moves along.

<shrug>

The problem is Lord of the Rings was always meant to be something deeper than The Hobbit. The Hobbit is a throwback to old children's stories, where magical things happen and it is the bumbling hero that happens to have the necessary insight or outside the box skills to win the day. Even The Battle of Five Armies is a bit ridiculous in its very nature, though it serves the purpose of wrapping things up in a solid moral lesson: don't be greedy. Thorin was greedy and didn't share with the humans and elves, and now some of his buddies are dead (not to mention he himself). It was only when the dwarves worked with humans and elves that they could both defeat Smog and defeat the Goblins.

Lord of the Rings isn't about moral lessons like that, because it's much more mature in its themes.

The marriage of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings is bound to ruin the original tone J.R.R. Tolkien set forth.

That said, I AM going to see this movie, but I'm bound to be biased since I don't think Peter Jackson was the right man for the Lord of the Rings films anyway. Sure, he did a good job, but he screwed up a lot of moments as well.

Capone - You raise an interesting point. I didn't know, until reading further, the extent of revisions posthumously made to the original Hobbit manuscript. The story we know today, and in publication since 1966 (The original published in 1937) was revised to better fit it in with the wider story and world of LOTR, written well after 1937, in 1955

Indeed, the nefarious nature of the One Ring wasn't even forms until work began on LOTR and only then with revisions to The Hobbit.

Yup. The biggest change was in the chapter Riddles in the Dark. When Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, he didn't have any of the original ideas he had for Lord of the Rings. Gandalf mysteriously disappeared because he was just a sort of mentor character. He saved everyone's butts once, but couldn't be a crutch. Indeed, his absence is what forces Bilbo later on to "nut up or shut up".

I feel like making The Hobbit into two movies isn't being done in any way to actually honor Tolkien's creation with an accurate book-to-film translation. It's partly for the money, and partly, at this point, just a vanity project of Peter Jackson's. The Hobbit shouldn't be, thematically at least, at all like Lord of the Rings. It ruins the nature of the story.

But I'm a pretentious wet blanket. As I said, I'll still see the movie.